Syria Tipping Point

Obama is poised to intervene in Syria, morally outraged by the Syrian government's chemical assault on its citizens. What seems at first glance a clear cut moral issue is, from a larger perspective, participation in the global failure cascade of Climate Destabilization. This regional horror is symptomatic of a broader process of global genocide into which we are being drawn.

The political unrest in Syria is rooted in widespread farming failure due to Climate Destabilization.

The crunch came in the context of an intensifying and increasingly regular drought cycle linked to climate change. Between 2002 and 2008, the country's total water resources dropped by half through both overuse and waste.

Once self-sufficient in wheat, Syria has become increasingly dependent on increasingly costly grain imports, which rose by 1m tonnes in 2011-12, then rose again by nearly 30% to about 4m in 2012-13. The drought ravaged Syria's farmlands, led to several crop failures, and drove hundreds of thousands of people from predominantly Sunni rural areas into coastal cities traditionally dominated by the Alawite minority.

The exodus inflamed sectarian tensions rooted in Assad's longstanding favouritism of his Alawite sect – many members of which are relatives and tribal allies – over the Sunni majority. [emphasis mine] source

This is humanity on Climate Destabilization. This is how Climate Destabilization unfolds. As environment resources supporting our lives collapse, preexisting social conflicts explode. Conflict resulting from resource depletion brings out the worst in humanity, as war has always done. War-making is intoxicating. Human "enemies" are easy for our ancient instincts to comprehend, as a focus for our rage. Both sides escalate until one sinks to mass atrocity.

The failure cascade of our planet's climate includes OUR social, political, and psychological responses. What we do in response to a deteriorating environment is an inherent component of the destructive process.

To see only the atrocities, ignoring the environment-based forces that push human beings to commit them, is morally naive. Every one of us is capable of committing atrocity with enough pressure, after years of deteriorating conditions, feeling that we must protect our families, our way of life, and everything we hold dear. When we become hopeless and desperate, we turn into monsters. (See Chris Hedges War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning)

Focus on the bottom line. The underlying cause is fossil fuel dependence gradually making our planet uninhabitable. Any military intervention increases fossil fuel use, generating a vicious cycle of its own. It also diverts funds away from clean energy programs.

What is an appropriate moral response?

Reframe the issue to focus on what's driving people on both sides of the conflict. Avoid demonizing and blame.

Channel moral outrage on all sides into stopping the underlying process, supporting a global program to switch from fossil fuel to renewables.

It's time to see that "Climate Change" isn't just changes in the air and water, it's "People Change" in the worst sense. Climate Change is People Change! Got it?

Our response to Syria is a critical tipping point. We will either make climate destabilize even faster or channel our outrage constructively. Put another way we will take another step toward being monsters ourselves by trying to rescue perceived victims from perceived enemies, or we'll take a baby step toward globally responsible mature humanity.

At some point after enough innocent people are killed, somthing will be done.

We as a nation have suddenly turned to an outlook of "peace at all cost", and while I am sick of war, and tired of a government that seems bent on meddling in a middle east that did not ask for our help, this situation is diffrent, and somthing must be done by the international community.

Chemical weapons are indiscriminate, and while most of you will agree that bullets have killed more people than than Sarin gas, there is a very large distinction to be made here.

Sarin kills every living thing, if it breaths, it dies.

Sarin does not care if your a combatant, or a pregnant woman, or a priest, it will poison and kill you painfuly.

One of the few bright points in international politics was reached when 97% of the countrys on this earth outlawed the use of such weapons. If this is allowed to go unpunished, we risk the same isolationism that made a cotastrophy like world war 2 possible, and the following cold war probable.

"The U.S. government doesn’t want you to know the truth about their wars. This is why Chelsea Manning is in prison for blowing the whistle on war crimes, including an attack in which “U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence.” It’s why the military denied for years that they used white phosphorus, a chemical weapon, in Fallujah.

"This rampant dishonesty is precisely why we should never trust them when they want to go to war. Especially when they refuse to call war by its name."

I just watched some CNN reports on the rebels in Syria. The US govt is defining the rebels as "extremist" if they have terrorist links, and "moderate" if they are just Islamist. Whatever Islamist means.

Revolution is always a mess. And, not just in Syria. Disparate groups uniting under a common theme to "get the bum in power out." Once the you get the "bum" out, then all the various factions of the coalition that fought together want to take control. And, the in fighting and civil war commences. History is rife with examples.

Once Alexander II was out in Russia, it was open warfare between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The US postponed the inevitable fight between the slave owning class and the merchant/manufacturers for 70+ years, but it nevertheless happened. We threw out Saddam, and it was open warfare between the Sunis and the Shias that still hasn't stopped. Egypt is currently undergoing this with the Army having stepped in to take control again in a fight between the secularists and Islamists. Once Bashir (Batshit) al-Asad is out of power, the bloodshed won't cease. And, throughout the process, various coalitions come and go under the theory of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Who will dominate at the end of this mess in Syria? I'm going with the group that has the greatest access to weapons, the best tacticians, and the greater will to fight to the death than their opponents.